Two weeks ago, the gaming world lost one of its most influential creators in Gary Gygax — one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons. Over on Newsweek’s gaming blog, Level Up, N’Gai Croal has interviewed several folks from the videogame industry to hear how D&D impacted their lives — both personally and professionally. Today, Todd Howard’s interview with N’Gai went up. Here’s a sample:

Q: What do you remember about your first experience with Dungeons & Dragons?

A: My earliest memory was going with my brother to a game store called Conflicts and my parents dropping us off on a Tuesday night to play this “D&D” game. The next three hours were a revelation. It was like a new gateway into awesomeness was opened for me. This was the summer of 1978, if I remember right, and I was eight. I can recall counting the days until each Tuesday. It’s one of my favorite memories, of real bonding time with my brother and others.

I never played it either. I first started with sci fi rpg boardgames like Fasa’s BATTLETECH series when it was still called BATTLEDROIDS. Then the rules intensive wargame NAPOLEON AT WATERLOO. From there it was Steve Jackson’s CAR WARS along with some GURPS. Finally my brother inlaw gave me a box of Gary Gygax’s CYBORG COMMANDOS. I loved the doomsday setting of it but could never really get into the rules so I just made up some modified rules to make playing it more.. understandable 🙂